Inter-speaker acoustic differences of sustained vowels at varied dysarthria severities for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

JASA Express Lett. 2024 Dec 1;4(12):125203. doi: 10.1121/10.0034613.

Abstract

We study inter-speaker acoustic differences during sustained vowel utterances at varied severities of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis-induced dysarthria. Among source attributes, jitter and standard deviation of fundamental frequency exhibit enhanced inter-speaker differences among patients than healthy controls (HCs) at all severity levels. Though inter-speaker differences in vocal tract filter attributes at most severity levels are higher than those among HCs for close vowels /i/ and /u/, these are comparable with or lower than those among HCs for the relatively more open vowels /a/ and /o/. The differences typically increase with severity except for a few parameters for /a/ and /i/.

MeSH terms

  • Aged
  • Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis* / physiopathology
  • Dysarthria* / etiology
  • Dysarthria* / physiopathology
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Phonetics
  • Severity of Illness Index
  • Speech Acoustics*